


Convalescence

by Markovia



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Aftermath, Blood, Gun Violence, Kissing, Love/Hate, M/M, Near Death Experiences, Physical Disability, Post-Ketsu, Recovery, Sex, Violence, fight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-25
Updated: 2017-05-25
Packaged: 2018-11-04 19:40:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10997646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Markovia/pseuds/Markovia
Summary: Shizuo had been shot and left to die in the streets. Izaya never thought that he would return to Ikebukuro for that reason but here he is, leaning heavily against his walking stick, waiting for his flight to board.





	Convalescence

**Author's Note:**

> Post-Ketsu three parter I wanted to write as I'm having real trouble with my two other ongoing fics/I'm moving house so don't have much time to sketch out ideas for them. This was just sat in my head and I had to put it to paper. I will hopefully update the others early next week! Hope you enjoy.

 

The fight raged one as it always did, the never-ending violence fuelled by the monstrous fire in his head. He could barely see through the red mist fogging his vision, he could barely hear over the pounding of blood in his ears. With a great roar, the man dressed in the bartender’s uniform ripped a street sign from the pavement and held it aloft, spraying lumps of tarmac across the intersection from the sheer force of the movement. The man standing a few feet away let out a high-pitched laugh and raised his flick knife with a grin. 

 

“I thought you  _ hated  _ violence?” he mocked, voice drenched with sarcasm. 

 

Shizuo scoffed. His fingers tightened around the sign and the metal bent easily beneath the iron grip. “I do. But I hate  _ you _ more, Izaya.”

 

The name rolled off his tongue as easy as it ever had. 

 

“Izaya?” the man replied, cocking his head. 

 

The blond moved to attack before he processed the questioning tone to the man’s voice and raised the mangled sign above his head. Finally he’d crush that shitty little flea, finally-  _ bang. bang. bang. _ A sudden, awful pain spread across his chest and he stumbled back with an uncharacteristic cry of pain. When he swivelled his head to look down and saw a rapidly spreading bloodstain pluming from three deep wounds in his stomach. There was another loud crack from across the street, another burst of pain on his left shoulder. Shizuo gasped and dropped to his knees. The street sign clattered to the ground next to him. 

 

“Hollow-points,” came a jeering voice from above. “Do enough damage to kill even you, Heiwajima.”

 

This wasn’t normal, the blond thought, as he fell forward onto his hands. He called him  _ Shizu-chan _ not Heiwajima. It was knives, not bullets. Guns was far too simple for the flea - he would use something more theatrical, more complicated, more  _ him.  _ The flea would want him to suffer more. It hit him then, as the red mist cleared from view and he caught sight of the unknown face sneering at him from above -  _ that's not Izaya _ . But he’d seen him! He’d heard that horrible, grating laugh - hadn't he? He’d seen the knife - no, no that wasn’t a knife in his hand, that was a shining silver handgun. The stranger slammed his foot against Shizuo’s back and drove him into the concrete hard enough for his jaw to crunch against the floor. His arms and legs weren’t moving, they weren’t responding to what he wanted them to do. Blood was pooling around his body now, warm and sticky and disgusting. Yet somehow, Shizuo almost wanted to laugh. Of course, he thought, he must have been seeing things. The flea was already dead. His mind drifted to their final confrontation, to the way Izaya’s arms had crunched beneath his fists, how he’d goaded him right until the end.  _ Do it, monster.  _ How quickly he forgotten what he'd done. 

 

His strength left him quickly, draining out with the great quantities of blood. Shizuo closed his eyes and wondered if he’d ever felt pain like this before. Perhaps when he was younger, when his body was still adjusting to the hell he put it through. The stranger was kicking him but he could barely feel it. He wondered why this man had a vendetta against him, why he thought it right to gun him down on his way home from work. It didn’t matter really, he mused, as his vision faded. He was going to die. 

 

How might Izaya have felt in that moment? Afraid - no, probably not. Smug -  more likely. It crossed his fading mind that Izaya may be the one to greet him at the gates of Tartarus, draped in the cloak of Death with that ever-sharp smirk on his face and the promise of danger in his eyes. There was a pressure on his back and chest and he felt the floor fall away underneath him. Shizuo blacked out then, praying to whatever being thought him still worth listening to that he would not have to spend the rest of eternity in his own personal purgatory with Izaya. That was what life had been like since their final fight, full of visions of the flea. He saw his trademark coat slipping around corners, heard his laugh in crowds. Every morning he woke in a cold sweat thanks to the intense dreams that flitted from intimate to nightmarish so easily. He hoped death would be a little more peaceful. 

 

Ah, it had been such a long time since he'd known peace. 

 

 

-0-

 

 

The information broker hummed tunelessly and rested a hand on the windowsill so that he could lower himself down onto the small seat on the frame. The action was innocuous enough, just a young man sitting to enjoy the pleasant view of Mount Fuji and the ward of Shimizu. Those who looked closer might notice the way he leaned heavily against his hands as he lowered himself onto the window seat and the gentle tremor that ran through the tightly knotted muscles of his thighs. The discomfort wasn’t obvious but it was definitely there. His brows were furrowed for a moment until he swung his legs up onto the seat and leaned back against the frame. With a tired sigh, he relaxed and enjoyed the gentle breeze rolling off the sea. It was a warm, peaceful day but it did little to soothe his restless mind. 

 

It had been six months since his confrontation with Shizuo, six long months of healing and rehabilitation. At first he had been ambivalent about getting back onto his feet but after much prodding from his ever-unpleasant secretary Namie Yagiri, he pushed himself to the point that he could walk short distances with a cane and not too much pain. He was a little surprised that Namie moved with him from Tokyo, though he had some inclination that she may have wanted to avoid the city and the whisperings of Seiji’s recent proposal. The woman was her usual surly self but he liked having her around, she was a good conversation partner when she wasn’t intentionally ignoring him. During this time he began to converse with his old business contacts and soon enough he managed to continue his prior dealings from his remote apartment by the coast. 

 

He’d often heard of people heading to the seaside for periods of convalescence and he had to admit, it was a beautiful place. Rather than opting for a high-rise, he decided to rent a pretty townhouse on the outskirts of the main city. Izaya took over the bottom level so that he would not have to climb the stairs that often, while Namie occupied the top floor. The middle floor housed a number of filing cabinets, some equipment he used to exercise his legs and an empty bedroom. The ocean was a stone’s throw from the front door and Izaya had a fantastic view of it from the bay window in his office. He often sat on the window seat until the sun slid behind the horizon and marvelled at the beautiful pinks and oranges of the sky. It was peaceful, an idyllic place for some. Unfortunately, not for Izaya. Observing from afar was getting boring, he wanted to be back in a city, somewhere throbbing with human life. He wanted Ikebukuro but he knew that could never happen, not after-

 

Izaya pinched the bridge of his nose and ignored the ache in his thighs. As much as he wanted to accept the assault on his body as a victory, he couldn't quite bring himself to forget about it. Not the way that Shizuo bared his teeth, nor the way the sweat dropped off his brow and the way he aggressively landed his devastating punches. He always wanted Shizuo to be the one to kill him - it anything that was the reason he clung to life after that Russian woman stabbed him deep in the stomach. It has to be Shizuo, he still thought that even now. Shizuo or old age. Old age, ha.  _ As fucking if _ . Izaya knew that he would die young and he was okay with that. He’d carved out that path for himself long ago. Shizuo would no doubt live to be an old age, a final ‘fuck you’ to the informant he hated so much. 

 

That thought was why it startled him so much when Shinra - the only person from Ikebukuro who still had his mobile number - called him on that sunny afternoon to tell him that Shizuo was currently being rushed into his lab, bullets embedded in his body. There were screams coming from somewhere in the distance, faint enough for it to take Izaya a minute to realise that the cries were coming from Shizuo. They were hideous shrieks, guttural and obviously pained. 

 

“He’s been shot. Celty found him before-” 

 

“Why do I care?” Izaya asked, raising a brow. He heard Shinra sigh and the familiar sound of Celty’s fingers tapping against her PDA. The screams hadn’t stopped but they were quieter than before.  

 

“Because,” Shinra answered, sounding quite peeved. There was the slap of plastic against skin. “Because I  _ saw  _ you both that day and I know that despite everything-”

 

“What are you talking about?” the information broker mumbled, picking at an errant thread poking out of the window seat cushion. Izaya knew exactly what Shinra was talking about. That day before Hollywood, after their fight in the streets surrounded by the Blue Squares and the Yellow Scarves, when Izaya has been taunting the monster about his emotionless brother. The day that their fight ended in kisses and torn clothes and  _ fuck me harder  _ alongside the usual blood and bruises. 

 

“I saw you. In the alley behind Russia Sushi. You kissed him and then left th-”

 

“No.”

 

“Your relationship with Shizuo was bordering on obsession, Iz-”

 

Izaya hissed loudly, objecting to the implication before it ever left Shinra’s mouth. “You do know what he did to me, right? That monster crippled me.”

 

“Oh come on Izaya,” Shinra snorted. There was a dull beeping in the background crackle of the audio from the mobile. “It wasn't anything you didn't deserve.”

 

For a moment the informant was silent, face ruddy from the harsh words from his so-called friend. Shinra was nothing if not brutally honest, he thought, partly amused, partly offended. “Why did you call  _ me _ ?”

 

“Because I thought you would want to know,” the doctor replied, after a moment of hesitation. “For some reason or another.”

 

“There is no reason, you idiot. Is he going to die?” Izaya raised a hand into a stream of sunlight filtering through the curtains. Of course he wasn’t going to die, it was Shizuo. The monster was unstoppable. Shinra didn’t answer for a while, clearly busying himself with setting up equipment. 

 

“I don’t know.” 

 

Even in the sunlight, Izaya felt cold. “What do you mean ‘I don’t know’? You’re a doctor, aren’t you?”

 

“ _ Yes _ . I don’t know what is going to happen, Izaya. Shizuo’s body has always been abnormally good at recovering but the damage is extensive. The guy used some sort of weird ammunition. It’s not a clean wound, it seems to have exploded inside him.”

 

“Hollow point,” Izaya murmured, lowering his hand. He wrapped his fingers around his thigh and noticed then that he was trembling. 

 

Shinra growled angrily under his breath, a noise quite alien to the usually cheerful doctor. “I’ve got to go. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

 

“Have  _ fun _ ,” Izaya sneered, tightening the grip on his thigh. He wanted it to stop shaking, he wanted to be fine. 

 

Shinra put the phone down without further reply, clearly annoyed by the sarcastic comment. The information broker dropped his mobile into his lap and let out a ragged breath. His shoulders were trembling and he kept his jaw clenched tightly shut, uncertain of whether it was a laugh or a sob trying to pass his lips. The monster was slain - surely he should be elated? The man who snapped his arms and fucked up his legs was dying somewhere far away in the city. Izaya placed the heels of his hands over his eyelids and tried to steady his breathing. He pictured Shizuo laying on one of the many intersections, guts spilling on the concrete, blond hair stained red. That image should have been beautiful, wonderful but it wasn’t. A far more more dazzling thought entered his mind, a memory of strong fingers stroking his bare chest the winding around his throat and holding it softly. He still recalled the way Shizuo sighed his name that night rather than drawled it angrily as he usually did. As much as he wanted to remember Shizuo only as the  _ monster  _ he was during their final fight, he found that he could not. 

 

Instead he thought of all the times he kissed him and enjoyed it. The first time had been one of the best - his body had ached from the way Shizuo had thrown him against the alley wall and, half-drunk on adrenaline, he’d smothered the monster’s vicious mouth with a kiss. At first it had just been a joke but it only took the slightest movement of Shizuo’s lips to make Izaya realise that  _ fuck _ this was what he’d always wanted from the other man. Despite his genuine hatred for the monster, he kept on going back to Ikebukuro and before that first kiss he’d never quite figured out the reason why. It wasn’t love, definitely not. A twisted version of hate, perhaps, but not love. 

 

Perhaps it was the intensity of those two months between that first kiss and their last confrontation that caused them both to go too far. Their final night together, they both said things they knew deep down were not true but they had been hating each other for so many years that it seemed only natural to cover any sentiment with viciousness. 

 

Izaya laughed in his face and said that it had all been a joke, just another way to get to him. 

 

Shizuo nearly choked him to death in a rage. When he dropped the wheezing man to the floor, he said that no human would ever love him back, that he was too much of a freak and he would always be alone. 

 

The next time they encountered one another, they thought of nothing but murder. 

 

But now, there was an unignorable need to see him aching in his chest. Izaya grit his teeth together - it was just to be sure he was dead. That was it. If he saw the blond’s lifeless body laid flat out on Shinra’s operating table, perhaps this ridiculous, enduring obsession could end. 

 

“Namie!” he called, annoyed by how weary his voice sounded. “Namie!”

 

The woman stomped into his office as he moved his feet off the seat onto the floor. “What are you shouting about?”

 

“I need you to book a flight for me,” Izaya answered, coldly. He reached into the pocket of his jeans and threw it toward her. Namie swiftly caught it and held it between her thumb and forefinger, as if the very idea of touching his possessions was rancid. “Narita Airport.”

 

She raised a brow. “Are you-?

 

“Don’t ask stupid questions, Namie,” Izaya snapped. He pushed himself up onto his feet and shakily moved over to his desk. With a sharp hiss of pain, he dropped into the chair and swivelled around to face his computer. “It’s just business. I won’t be gone long.”

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
